This July, many of the members of Rising Tide-affiliated, anti-extraction, and climate justice groups around the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will converge in beautiful Utah to train, discuss, strategize, and develop the structure, dynamics and capacity of the Rising Tide network.

The Rising Tide Continental Gathering will provide a significant venue for networking and forwarding proposals that will impact the course of the burgeoning anti-extraction and climate justice movement. The gathering will also promote solidarity work with frontline and fenceline communities that must be a part of our struggles. The network itself is collaboratively creating the agenda for the gathering, ensuring that participants will get out of the gathering what they put into it. Come, participate, and help it grow.

Actions continue in Oklahoma to blockade the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Among others on May 13th Bob Waldrop, 60, fourth generation Oklahoman and prominent Oklahoma City community member walked onto an active construction site for the Keystone XL pipeline in Seminole County and locked himself to an Excavator, a piece of heavy machinery used in the construction of the pipeline. The next day Bailey and Holly, part of Cross Timbers Earth First!, blocked another construction site. Holly and Bailey are part of an ongoing wave of local Oklahomans who have been resisting the KXL by using direct action. Local Oklahomans explain they aren’t just resisting the KXL but the apathy that has existed for too long in the face of these destructive petro-chemical industries. Bailey explained, “ I am blockading tar sands because I am blockading indifference. I am blockading passivity.”

On May 24th activists associated with Mountain Justice, Radical Action for Mountain Peoples’ Survival (RAMPS), and Hands Off Appalachia! entered the Gay Street branch of UBS wealth management services and refused to leave. Inside the office, three activists locked themselves to a large paper maché puppet depicting an investment banker. The non-violent protest was in opposition to UBS’ funding and supporting of the harmful extractive process known as mountaintop removal coal mining. These actions come on the heels of a series of actions that have directly confronted mountaintop removal and the corporations that facilitate this destructive practice.